Category: Research

By Alex Wojcik '23

...continue reading "Big 12, Big Country: How Greater Travel Impacts Home Field Advantage in College Football"

By Sabin Hart '24

You are probably familiar with volleyball’s most iconic action, the spike. You may even understand the ideal possession: bump, set, spike! But even a single spike, when an offensive player smashes the ball to the opponent’s floor, is much more complex than you may have realized. Not every spike, nor every spiker is the same, and in this article, I will explain some of the phenomena that I observed while performing some formal analysis of published performance data across the men’s highest college level. 

...continue reading "An Exploration of Volleyball Performance Measurement in D1 Men’s Volleyball"

By Isabel Pantle '23

Introduction

An essential beauty of sports, especially football, is the unpredictability of the game; no one expected the winless Jets to beat a hot 9-5 Rams in Week 15 of the 2020 season, yet it happens nonetheless. But in an era of statistics and analysis, how unpredictable is the game?

In this paper, I will analyze the predictive power of different statistics from NFL games on game outcomes. Particularly, I will explore if there are any particular statistics (or combinations of statistics) that are more predictive of the winner of any given NFL game. For example, something like point differential (the difference in points scored) would always be able to predict who wins a game because that is how the winner is determined, but how well do other statistics predict the outcomes? How well can multiple statistics as predictor variables predict outcomes? 

The predictor variables I will analyze are yards gained by a team’s offense, yards lost by a team’s defense, and turnover differential. Since the predictor variable (winning or losing the game) is a binary variable, I will be using a logistic regression to analyze the association between my different variables and the outcome of the game. First, I will model a logistic regression model for each statistic as an independent predictor variable. Then, I will create logistic regression models with pairs of predictor variables, and finally, I will create a logistic regression with many predictor variables to see if the accuracy of the models improves with more variables.

...continue reading "Analyzing the Predictive Power of NFL Statistics"

By Andy Feng '24

Introduction

Twenty-five years ago, Michael Jordan led the NBA in scoring by averaging 29.6 points per game. Last season, Steph Curry led the league with 32.0 points per game. However, despite both Jordan and Curry playing the guard position, the ways in which each player achieved their respective scoring titles were vastly different: Jordan dominated with his deadly mid-range jumper and fadeaway, while Curry barraged defenders with his hot shooting from beyond the arc with over five made threes per game. This difference in shot selection isn’t simply a difference between Jordan and Curry’s game, however. In fact, the drastic increase in three-point attempts is a league-wide phenomenon: since the introduction of the three-point line to the NBA in the 1979-80 season, the three-pointer has increased in popularity nearly every year. In this paper, I aim to explore how shot selection in the NBA has changed in the last twenty-five years and how this varies among the five basketball positions. 

...continue reading "NBA Shot Selection: How Have Players Changed Their Shooting in the Last Twenty-Five Years?"

By Luca Caviezel '24

Introduction

It’s June 13, 2004; the Group Stage of the UEFA European Championships. Bitter rivals France and England are facing off and are tied 1-1 deep into stoppage time. It looks as if the game will end in a draw when France star Thierry Henry is taken down in the England box after pouncing on a loose pass from Steven Gerrard. The whistle blows–the penalty is awarded to France! Manager Jacques Santini is faced with a dilemma: should he allow Henri to take the penalty, being one of the best players in the world and the player who earned the penalty; or does he instead choose team captain and global superstar Zinedine Zidane to take it instead. It was a crucial moment in the game, as a goal would almost certainly seal the win for the French. In the end, Zidane stepped up to take the kick, and coolly powered the ball into the bottom-left corner of the goal after sending the keeper in the wrong direction. The stadium erupted in cheers as the defending European champions won the game at the last moment.

Jacques Santini made the right choice in having Zidane take the penalty kick, and in this particular instance both the player who was fouled (Henri) and the one who ended up taking the kick (Zidane) would have been great options to take the potentially game-winning penalty. But the question of whether the player who is fouled for the penalty should be the one to take it is one that has plagued soccer coaches and players at every level for a long time. One argument for the player who was fouled taking the kick is that they earned the penalty and therefore it is rightfully theirs to take. On the other hand, emotions might be heightened if they just had an easy goal-scoring opportunity stolen from them. Additionally, players skill levels and experience must be considered–older players might not be as unsettled by the intensity of the situation as younger ones. Many teams have a designated penalty taker, for example Jorginho for Chelsea FC, but what if the player fouled is the designated taker? All of this must be considered by coaches when deciding who should take the penalty.

There have been few previous studies that attempt to answer the question of whether the fouled player should take the penalty kick. Eichler (2002) analyzed 5 seasons of German top flight soccer and found that fouled players scored 12% more often than non-fouled players. Drösser (2003), on the other hand, analyzed 10 seasons of the German top division and found that fouled players scored 4% fewer penalties, giving a slight advantage to non-fouled players. Kuss, Kluttig, and Stoll (2006) found that there was no statistically significant difference between the penalty conversion rates for players who were fouled and players who weren’t, controlling for several variables including age and number of goals scored. In short, there is no consensus on what the correct approach is. Additionally, there have been no recent studies on the subject. This paper seeks to answer the question: should the player who wins a penalty be the one to take it? It will look at penalties taken in the English Premier League from the beginning of the 2018-19 season through the end of November of the 2021-22 season. I hypothesize that non-fouled players will have a higher penalty average than fouled players.

...continue reading "Should the Player Who Wins the Penalty in a Soccer Game Be the One to Take It?"

By Carter Sullivan '24

Introduction

During the 2020-21 NBA season, the league had a massive problem. Players would pump fake, then jump into their defender as they shot the ball, abruptly veer off path when dribbling, and even hook their defender’s arm while shooting, all in search of foul calls (which they often received). By the end of this season, league executives had seen enough, and it was decided that “non-basketball moves” (like those mentioned above) would no longer be called fouls. Fans, pundits, and coaches alike were delighted with this rule, as it was common consensus that non-basketball moves were ruining the NBA. More specifically, many complained that modern NBA games involved far too many free throws, implying that NBA games from 10, 20, or even 30 years ago involved fewer free throw attempts than games from more recent seasons. In this paper, I’ll first investigate the truth behind this widely-believed increase in free throw attempts over the years, and if it is false, I will investigate why this may be. Finally, I will analyze the NBA’s free throw attempt data from this season (2021-22), and attempt to evaluate the impact of the league’s rule change regarding non-basketball moves.

...continue reading "Hook, Kick, and Veer: An Analysis of NBA Fouling Trends over the Years and the 2021-22 Rule Change Regarding non-Basketball Moves"

By Avery Borgmann '24, Luca Caviezel '24, Head of Research Devan Fink '23, Jack Maling '23, Joseph Notis '21, President Matthew Schnell '22, Treasurer Avery Sholes '24

Introduction

Suppose the Los Angeles Lakers are playing the Phoenix Suns. The Suns are trailing by three points with 15 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, suggesting that they need to intentionally foul a Lakers player and send him to the free throw line, in a last attempt to get one more possession. LeBron James is having a poor shooting night from the field for the Lakers. Should the Suns purposefully try to foul James, one of the greatest basketball players in history, hoping that his poor shooting night will continue at the free-throw line? Generally speaking, will a shooter who is ice cold from the field also struggle at the free throw line? In this paper, we explore the relationship between a shooter’s success from the field and their success at the line within the same game, and examine whether teams should purposefully foul players at the end of close games who are not shooting well from the field. 

...continue reading "Does In-Game Field Goal Percentage Influence In-Game Free Throw Percentage?"

Tyler Brody '21

Introduction

Believe it or not, there was a time when the center was the marquee position in basketball. Many maintained no team could win an NBA championship without a dominant interior scorer, and legendary big men like George Mikan, Bill Russell, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar carried their teams to multiple titles through back to the basket dominance. In today’s game, however, you would be hard-pressed to find an offense run through the post, and, since Shaq, we have not seen a dominant five bulldoze his team’s path to a championship. ...continue reading "Evolution of the Center: How the Introduction of the Three-Point Shot Devalued the Traditional Big Man and Altered the Offensive Profile of NBA Centers"

Matthew Schnell '22

In nearly every sporting event, whether at an eight-year-old’s soccer game or the Super Bowl, fans can be heard screaming at the officials. Even when they make the right call, sports fanatics cannot help themselves from berating referees from doing their jobs. In soccer, fans take it to another level. One missed or wrong penalty call can cost teams three points. ...continue reading "The Fans’ Impact on the Whistle: How do the boos and jeers of shouting fans manipulate the referees’ calls during a game?"

Matthew Schnell '22

To examine the effects of returning kickoffs in the FCS and, more specifically, the Ivy League in the 2019 season, I looked at every single kickoff from the regular season, using ESPN’s play-by-play data. I parsed the data out into several different categories, including whether the team elected to return the kickoff, the distance of the kickoff, where the returner caught the ball, how far the returner traveled, and, thus, where the ensuing possession began. In total, I looked at 9,866 kickoffs from the FCS and 346 kickoffs from Ivy League teams. Due to the new NCAA kickoff rules, a player can fair catch the ball anywhere before the 25-yard line, and their team will start their possession at the 25-yard line. Moreover, I focused on kickoffs where the player caught the ball before this 25-yard line threshold and decided to return the kick. Below are tables and plots which summarize the effects of such players who elected to return the kickoffs when catching the ball anywhere before the 25-yard line.

...continue reading "A Brief Analysis on FCS and Ivy League Kickoffs"